Nope. Would be colossally abused. Anyone with 5-15 accounts (or however many you require to remove posts) could just silence anyone they want. With bots this would be easy to do and they could bot your posts to get them removed as soon as they appear.


We're not an exchange. We're a forum, and theymos has said he would never implement KYC and nor should he.

The only thing this is an example of is how lazy and greedy people are. It's getting ridiculous. You would think if this forum is their livelihood or the best opportunity they can get to earn a decent living then they wouldn't screw it up and would be on their best behaviour, but no. It's like getting a job you know you're lucky to get or have been giving a chance with, and it's a great job for the pay, and yet instead of doing the work, you slack off, turn up to work late, and then try passing off the work to someone else because you're too lazy to do it, and then when they do a shoddy job you ultimately pay the price, but it's still their fault for passing off the work to someone else so they're the only person to blame here regardless of who did they plagiarising. The person who bares the signature has been hired to do the job, not somebody else, and it's that persons responsibility to make sure they do what they're asked. If they sub contract the work and they screw up then the fuck up is still on them not the person they hired (or passed the work off to, which they shouldn't have even done in the first place).

They'll work it out eventually, especially if they have alts, but my suggestion isn't really to leave them languishing in some sort of digital limbo, but just to stop bots and malware spreaders from being a nuisance. They'll either just be accepted, or banned straight away if they're a bot or spreading malware. Users who post rubbish or break the rules in some other capacity like posting a ref link or something could be warned so they don't continue their behaviour.


He put it under the ok category:



I agree my suggestion would be useful and is pretty much one of the only ways to eradicate spambots and other nefarious characters, but I disagree with what you suggested and it wouldn't stop people spreading malware as they still get the chance to spread it before we catch them. Just giving people shadowbans after the fact isn't a great idea. If they break the rules then they should be banned, not just take up server space until they figure it out.


Spambots won't be aware of this and most people won't be aware of this feature who are just signing up to the forum. Most people won't even notice it as is the nature of shadowbanning, but it will catch all those who aren't familiar of the forum and how it works and it doesn't penalise everyone in the process.

But what exactly are you suggesting? It's useless just saying 'restrict 'registrations'. Restrict them how? And how do we not penalise everyone else under the same net? If people are spreading malware then just keep reporting those threads or posts but until you're going to propose something feasible then it's pointless even disusing (especially given the fact that theymos is almost certainly not going to implement any restrictions that hurt everyone).

One thing I've suggested in the past is that all new users are essentially shadowbanned until their first post or two has been verified by staff before they go public. That way spam bots wouldn't get through and anyone spreading malware could be dealt with before they get the chance to infect everyone.


Don't click the links unless you trust them. We are not responsible for users personal security and that is something only the individual can protect against. People really should be more careful with what they click, download, or who they send their money to.

Outsourcing posts now?  Another one for the bingo card. Blows my mind how lazy people can get here. All you have to do to earn a fairly decent amount of money here is make some posts but apparently even that is too difficult for a lot of people. Regardless, it doesn't matter who did the plagiarism or who you're trying to blame it on as the matter of the fact is that account was caught copying content. You should have taken better care of the account and certainly not trusted some random person to make posts for you but you've paid the ultimate penalty for that. If we were going to give you a pass because you claim someone else made those posts for you then everybody would use that excuse but it's certainly not one we're going to accept.

1) Theymos isn't going to do this (and nor should he) and 2) Restrict them how? I agree we have a huge problem with spam here but there are better ways to tackle it and without penalising everyone else. Any restrictions you put in place will just scare off genuine users whilst the ones who are here to abuse the forum will jump through whatever hoops you put in front of them time and time again because they are financially motivated to do so. Imagine you're new user and you come here and you struggle to post or are banned straight away (or restricted heavily in some way)  and all you wanted was to get an answer or genuinely talk about bitcoin. Those users will think fuck that and likely leave to never return. For those users who come here solely because they've been told they can earn good money here those are the ones that won't be stopped by a few hoops and will continue to create accounts and evade rules and bans etc. There are ways we can tackle the spam and many have already been suggested but heavily restricting users isn't really the way to go and it's futile even discussing it because theymos is dead against these sorts of restrictions. We can start by tackling the cause of the spam which is lazy campaigns. Requiring more than one merit to get a signature would also help (I think it should be a minimum of ten).

If the Atl Madrid game finishes 2-0 then I'll have three points from that. Last minute of injury time now.

Will be watching the PSG v Liverpool game in 15 mins. Should be a good one and probably pretty close. Could go any way, but I've gone with a 2-2 draw. I think PSG might win it with the home advantage though.


And Jose celebrating like they'd just scored the winning goal in the last minute of the Champions League final. He was beating the shit out of the water bottles with some WWE moves lol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj9bCdpsk9A

You wouldn't. I think if you removed signatures completely that would solve the issue instantly. All those who are causing the issue in the first place would just leave and to never return. Problem solved. This forum would probably go back to how it was in the good old days practically overnight. I think if you even just required a high amount of activity to get a signature that would solve a lot of the shitposting. I don't think having some minimum standards on how signature campaign managers can operate here would turn the forum into a police state either. Most campaigns would clean up their act when they realise there's some punishments for how they behave here. It's because they can get away with doing nothing that they do. If we stopped removing ref links then people would continue to spam them all day everyday but removing ref links doesn't = police state. There's rules here to try keep some order and not ruin the experience for everyone else. Signature campaigns have practically destroyed the forum and the vast majority of people don't think that's ok and simply telling campaigns to clean their act up or they can't advertise here should be common sense and not some form or tyranny.


I agree there's lots of things we can do but when can we try them? The longer we leave things the worse things get and more genuine users are pushed away and leave only to be replaced by dozens of spammers in their wake.

Most people are idiots and everybody thinks they're always right. The left think they're right. The right think they're right. Christians think they're right. Atheists think they're right. Nazis think they're right. Snowflakes think they're right. How many times have you seen someone change their mind on any of those subjects? Most people don't want to listen to facts or arguments and will still believe whatever helps them sleep a bit better at night regardless of the truth.




We will always be apes in shoes. I don't think we'll ever lose the tribe mentality either and online debates is just a continuation of that.


The people who voted to leave don't understand politics or economics either. Most people who vote know fuck all about anything and that's why democracy is a flawed system. Every scenario involving leaving the EU is going to leave the UK significantly worse off, but hey, they they told we'd save money by leaving and less immigrants would be here so that's all the matters. Those were lies too.

No. It should be the signature campaign managers who are paying people to make the same old crap day after day.

That sub board should have more moderators, but nothing will change as long as people are being paid to make the spam. It's like hiring more staff to bucket water out of a sinking ship. The problem needs to be tackled at the source and the holes patched up, and those holes are badly run campaigns. You'd need a couple of full time moderators to be truly efficient to tackle the spam, but it's the campaign managers who should be held responsible for this as it's their job that they just aren't doing properly.

Calling them unofficial has always been silly to me. Rules probably aren't rules if they're not official. They're just something someone made up and people are always going to complain that they're not official when they fall foul of them. Maybe we should call them standards or guidelines instead of rules, but again it's just semantics. I think they're probably only unofficial because they were mostly generated by the community and not theymos, and when BadBear was here he was even against a rule-set because he believed people would then just try find loopholes around them (as people do, but I don't think that's an excuse not to have them). There needs to be some rules (or standards if you don't want to call them that) otherwise things just delve into chaos.


Are any rules or laws rock solid with no room for leeway? If the speed limit is 30mph and you're caught doing 31 or 32, technically you've broke the law, but the cop could either let you off if he wasn't an arsehole, or by the letter of the law he could give you a ticket if he was. Morality isn't always black and white either. Is it ok to steal? Most would say no. Is it ok to steal to feed your starving children? Maybe. Is there any distinction between stealing from huge corporation or a mom and pop store to feed your starving children? Cases can always be taken on a case by case basis but people are always going to complain when they feel someone else has been given special treatment for essentially the same 'crime'.

It doesn't matter if they ignore it but if the rules are there and are also shown upon sign-up then at least they have no excuses. A lot of people genuinely are oblivious to the rules, and it's one of the excuses that is commonly used (though obviously there's no excuses for copy and pasting but at least they've been told about it so can't use this excuse).


Well it depends on how theymos wants the forum to be run. He's stated he's against strict rules and probably wants as much freedom as possible with as little mod intervention as possible, but you can't have things both ways. As much freedom as possible is obviously good, but when you let people do largely what they want and staff take the backseat it quickly becomes very messy and theymos might be mostly ok with how the forum is now or accepts that's the price you pay for freedom. I think a middle ground can be found either way though. It would be easy to hire more mods to clean up the forum or crack down on signature campaigns but if that was what theymos wanted he probably would have done it by now. Boards like Bitcoin Discussion need a dedicated mod regardless of how much theymos wants to crack down on things though.


Don't call them rules then. Call them guidelines or community standards. Not having the rules or 'guidelines' displayed is what's causing a lot of the rules breaking in the first place. If people were made aware of the basic standards expected here then most wouldn't break them. We don't have to explicitly say do not copy and paste or you will die. You can just give a few examples of will likely get you banned.

It's both luck and knowledge. Nobody can predict a correct outcome consistently without a bit of luck and that's what sports betting always is. You can certainly make educated guesses based on a bit of research but the results are always out of your hands and with the players on the pitch. There can be penalties, injuries and sendings off, not to mention just having a bad game. Even so called experts or football pundits often don't do that well with the scores. In fact, I think I beat most of the BBC and Skybet ones last year. I wouldn't call myself an expert but I do spend a few hours on my predictions and weigh up lots of factors and it works to some extent as I do pretty well in these competitions and am in profit from gambling, but my luck will probably run out eventually.

Well that's certainly one way to stop the sig spam once and for all but it's something theymos doesn't seem to want to do or is only going to do it as a last resort. I don't think we should ever remove signatures from everyone all-together though as it's not fair that spammers will ruin it for everyone else and those will be the people that will immediately leave this board to never return if that happens. It would be best to either remove signatures from all ranks until you've earned x amount of merit and/or charge people for them via more donator ranks.


You could remove their signatures until they've earned x amount of merit. Say, if you're spotted copy and pasting then your signature is removed until you've earned 100 merit or so. I did suggest previously that users have their signature banned until they've shown that they can contribute something here, but since merit has been implemented maybe that would be a good indicator of how much they're actually contributing and it gives them a chance to atone for their sins and get their signature back providing they've contributed something here in the meantime.


Yeah, many would probably just give up. My only issue with this though is I reckon most of them will just hang around like a bad smell trolling and complaining about how unfair it is.

Why would you even be on this forum just a few hours before you're going on honeymoon? Doesn't make any sense to me. If I was going on a vacation that day this forum would be the least of my worries, especially if you hadn't got everything planned or booked. This just sounds like another variation of the classic I was under some stress/pressure excuse.


You could argue that Legendaries should know better. I think if we allow them a free pass on certain things then lower-ranked users would then complain that they're being unfairly punished. I think the only exception I'd be ok with is if they had their signature removed/banned and they lose their ability to earn via it here. We could maybe look at just letting the community handle copy and pasters with negative feedback like like we do with scams, but sadly most ICO campaigns don't care about negative feedback and they'd still be able to get away with this behaviour which isn't ok.

Nobody should need a warning to not plagiarise content. It blows my mind that people even think to do this and there's no excuses for it, but that's greed and laziness for you. You can argue that it's harsh but that's how it is around here right now unless theymos says otherwise. I agree the rules or punishments for plagiarism should be displayed somewhere more prominent and shown upon sign-up, but again, this is only something theymos can implement.


There's usually more but one is all you need for a ban. Staff aren't going to go though all their posts and tally up all the ones we can find as it's just a colossal waste of time. I probably wouldn't have banned him for that ICO announcement but it still should be properly quoted and sourced. 

Maybe read the post you actually quoted as to why it's a good idea. What is the point of both users and staff wasting time on reports for users that have already been permabanned? There's enough work to be done here already without having to deal with stuff that has already been dealt with. It takes a colossal amount of time and effort for people to report copy and pasters and provide all the evidence and then it wastes staff time having to go though them all needlessly. If the user was shown as permabanned then they can just ignore it. Once a user is banned here their account is done for so I don't think it's a big deal showing that. Many other forums show even temp banned users. It would be helpful in other ways too. You could be doing business with someone and they could just disappear without warning. If they've been banned then at least you'll know why they've mysteriously gone AWOL or are not responding to your messages.


It wouldn't. Staff can already see who has been banned as they have a mark on their profile so it will take little effort to make that publicly known.


Possibly, but I suppose it depends on what theymos' reasons are for not displaying that info.

Seems like it's been ages since the last games. I'm glad there's so many games over the Christmas period. I like the intensity and a lot of points can be won changing the table drastically.


I'd hardly call it a challenge. I could probably win either the La Liga or Champions League with Real Madrid. If any manager is truly great (or thinks that they are) then they should go win something with a team that's never won anything, then they'd really be a great coach. In my opinion winning the Premier League with Leicester is a far greater achievement than winning something with Real or Man United. If a manager truly was special then they should prove it by going to a lesser team and raising them to win something, but for me winning titles with already world class squads isn't that impressive as you'd have to be a complete buffoon not to.

Well I've only been here since late 2013 so I can't say whether things were different between the time you and I signing up, but the prevalence of signatures will likely be down to opinion and perception, but signatures have always stood out to me. PrimeDice was probably one of the first things I noticed about this forum because so many people had their advert in their signatures, but for the first month or so I was here I didn't know people were actually getting paid to post with them. I remember being pretty annoyed finding out that you could get paid to post as I'd made around 100 posts already and could have been getting paid for them  . Things were different back then though. Sig spam was only a minor issue and only a few people got greedy and lazy and caused a nuisance and those that started spamming were usually quickly dealt with and issued temp bans, but as bitcoin grew over the years so did this board and more people found signature campaigns and the problem snowballed from there to what it is today. 


I think Bitcoin Discussion has been hit just as bad as the alt coin section has, but I see the entire board suffering as a whole rather than specific sections.


I don't think people are going to get banned for posting memes and a quote from a movie. I don't know of one instance where this has happened.


Discussion isn't irrelevant. I think the only way progress or change will ever happen here is via discussions on the topics that people think are important. Theymos was seemingly against making a merit requirement for Juniors initially but that eventually happened and I think a big part of that was so many people were pro it and thought it would help and argued as such. Things can change but they won't if everyone just remains silent. People should be able to propose ideas good and bad and others should discuss the benefits and negatives of that.


Some people may come across as high and mighty, but many people are also very annoyed by these lazy copy and pasters and what they've done to the board.


Well that's only something theymos can implement and I've asked for a ban button that gives the reason as copy and pasting so that would clear the confusion up. I've also requested signature bans instead of perma ones and those could be given instead in some cases. If the rules were made clear upon sign up I think that would also help, but again, that's only something theymos can do.

The trust system is there as a guide and people can interpret feedback as they wish. If you see someone with an unsourced negative then you can choose to ignore or discredit it if you think it's invalid without one. I'm not sure making it a requirement would change much though. You could just put any random link there, and as others have said, sometimes they're not always needed. What if you just think a user has been a very active and helpful member of the community over the years? How can you provide a source for that without creating a thread listing all the ways you think they've been helpful. Sometimes you can get that all across just in what you write in the actual feedback and no source is necessary.